A game networking system may manage the creation and exchange of virtual goods pertaining to games executing on the game networking system. Such virtual goods may be deposited into gaming accounts of players when the players perform various actions, such as achieving particular objectives within a game, sharing information about a game with friends on social media, or inviting other people to play a game. Such actions may be game-play-related actions or non-game-play-related actions. For example, in Zynga Poker, a player may win poker chips by winning a bet within a poker game or by winning a Lucky Bonus payout (e.g., by playing a separate Lucky Bonus slots game that is accessible by the player from within a Zynga Poker client).
Additionally, players may acquire virtual goods by paying real money for the virtual goods. For example, a player of Zynga Poker may purchase virtual poker chips using real money. Even if such virtual goods cannot be exchanged for real money, they may have a real money value—either because they were purchased by real money by a player or because of the time a player invested in performing the necessary actions to obtain the virtual goods.
“Headless clients” (e.g., clients that connect to a game but don't graphically render aspects of the game) may be run en masse on one or more machines for purposes of virtual good (e.g., chip) farming. Such clients may simply ping authentication and feature endpoints (e.g., to obtain virtual currency, which may then be dumped or otherwise redistributed among accounts). Such farming may devalue virtual goods, reduce revenues of the operator of the game networking system, reduce enjoyment of the players of the games executing on the game networking system, or disrupt business prediction models of the operator of the game networking system.